The news agency Bloomberg reported on Friday 20 January that the European Commission has notified the stock-exchange operators Deutsche Boerse and London Stock Exchange (LSE) that their planned merger could remove competitors in the field of clearing services.
According to Bloomberg, a statement of objections was sent to the two operators in December. In the same month, the Financial Times revealed that the European institution's investigations were now focusing purely on the clearing market for the trade in derivatives (see EUROPE 11688).
However, the sale of one of LSE's clearing units to the stock-exchange operator Euronext is reported to have been insufficient to appease the Commission's concerns, according to Bloomberg. LSE and Deutsche Boerse may soon come forward with a series of concessions.
In September 2016, the Commission announced that it was opening an in-depth investigation into the planned merger notified by the operators a month earlier. At the time, it stressed that the merger, which would combine the German, British and Italian stock exchanges, would lead to the creation of the largest European stock-exchange operator by a considerable margin. (Original version in French by Élodie Lamer)